The World Wide Web (or “the Web”) is a system of interlinked hypertext documents (i.e., Web pages) accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages containing contents such as text, images, videos, and other multimedia contents by accessing these contents using a Universal Resource Locator (URL) and navigating between these contents using hyperlinks. Throughout this paper, the term “document” is used to refer to an information representation including any or all of these contents. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level protocol used in establishing the Web as a distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information system. A Web server is a computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from Web clients (i.e., user agents such as the Web browser used by the users) and providing HTTP responses along with data contents, such as the web pages described above. The request from a Web client for accessing a Web page may require authentication before the requested access is allowed. Authentication may involve a request and validation of user name, password, or other user credentials. A computer running the Web server is called a Web server device while a computer running the Web client is called a Web client device.
The telephone is a telecommunications device that is used to transmit and receive sound, for example a conversation between two or more people using the telephones. Most telephones operate through transmission of electric signals over a complex telephone network (e.g., public switched telephone network or PSTN) which allows communication among users with individual telephone numbers. A telephone number is a sequence of numbers used to call from one telephone line to another connected via a telephone exchange (i.e., telephone switch) in a telephone network. Before a telephone call is connected, the telephone number is dialed by the calling party (or Caller) using a telephone keypad, which has essentially replaced the rotary dialer in the original telephone.
Echo cancellation is a technique used in telephony to remove echo from a voice communication in order to improve voice quality of the telephone call. Acoustic echo arises when sound from a loudspeaker (e.g., the earpiece of a telephone handset or a speaker of a speakerphone) is picked up by a nearby microphone in the same room (e.g., the microphone in the very same handset or speakerphone). The problem exists in communication scenarios where there is a speaker and a microphone.
A conference call is a telephone call in which the calling party wishes to have more than one called party listen in to the conversation of the call. The conference calls may be set up either to allow the called party to participate during the call, or to allow the called party to merely listen into the call and cannot speak. Conference calls can be set up so that the calling party calls the other participants and adds them to the conference. In other cases, the participants are able call into the conference, for example by dialing into a special telephone number of a conference bridge that links telephone lines.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a general term for a family of transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications over IP (Internet Protocol) networks such as the Internet. Based on the VoIP technology, voices are transported via the Internet rather than the PSTN. The equivalent in VoIP technology to a telephone exchange in the PSTN is called a VoIP server. The client portion of VoIP technology can be included in a telephone (e.g., VoIP telephone) or a computer (e.g., Skype) as a VoIP client device for making a telephone call. Whether using a telephone or a computer, the telephone numbers are still required in originating an Internet telephone call, which involves conversion of the analog voice signal to digital format and compression/translation of the digital signal into IP packets for transmission over the Internet. The process is reversed at the receiving end. In particular, VoIP systems employ session control protocols to control the set-up and tear-down of calls as well as audio codec's (coder/decoder) which encode speech allowing transmission over an IP network and decode the audio data stream back into the speech at the receiving end.
In summary, whether using the VoIP technologies over a packet switched data network or the traditional telephone transmission over the PSTN network, communicating with remote people using audio requires a considerable amount of initial setup. For example, the simple act of joining a conference call requires finding and dialing the proper phone number, then entering additional information such as the conference ID and password. Additional information is also required to know when the conference is held, who is going to participate, the topic of the meeting, or reference to any required meeting materials or background information. In another example, a simple two party telephone call often requires looking up a 10+ digit telephone number and entering it into the telephone before set up of the audio connection is initiated.